THE Doctrine of Maya - HolyBooks.com

""""""""""26 THE DOCTRINE OF MAYAtrue beyond doubt that Sankara means by may anothing but illusion."From Sarikara s time downward the phraseologyof the Vedanta was more and more settled technically, and even modern writers on the Vedanta usethe word maya in the same sense of illusionwhich was so clearly brought out by Sankara.After his time there has not been anydesire tochange the meaning of the term by a different usage.Hence it will hardly be of much use to examine thelater Sanskrit texts on the Vedanta in order to findout the wordit ismaya."In the first place,exceedingly difficult to do so, since the later literature is so varied, vast and undefined in extent ;secondly, the later Vedanta is in cases mixedmanywith the ideas of the Sankhya, Buddhism, etc. ;andthirdly, even if we were to succeed in collecting allthe more important modern works on pure Vedantaand were to collate the passages containing mayain a similar way, it would scarcely be of any profit,since, as we have already said, the modern usage ofthe term is in no way different from that of Sankara.A glance through such works as the Pancadati,the Veddntasdra, the Veddntaparibhasd, the Atmabodha,the Vivekacuddmani, etc., will amply endorsethis fact. We may, therefore, safely close our survey of the meanings of the term when we have comedown to Sarikara s time.Apart from its philosophic use, the word mayais used in modern classical Sanskrit to convey some